CHI01LA061 · Mooney M20S
Mooney M20S · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET) to St Clair County International Airport (PHN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA061
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20S
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N2184N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, MITo St Clair County International Airport (PHN), Port Huron, MI
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control on ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane contacted a snow bank on the side of the runway during landing. The landing was being made on runway 04 (5,103 feet by 100 feet). The pilot reported the winds were from the northwest at 10 knots and that a "minimal" crosswind correction was required on final approach. He continued to report that just prior to touchdown while 2 feet above the runway "…a significant gust ballooned the aircraft 5-6 ft. above the runway where the aircraft stalled and began to settle abruptly with a nose high attitude." The pilot added power in an attempt to recover, however, the airplane traveled to the right side of the runway where it contacted a snow bank and spun around prior to coming to rest. The local weather observation, taken 5 minutes prior to the accident, reported winds from 270 degrees at 11 knots, gusting to 18 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot failed to maintain directional control of the airplane and the runway selected resulted in a tailwind condition. Factors associated with the accident were the gusty crosswind and the snow bank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA061
- Event ID
- 20010105X00043
- Case number
- CHI01LA061
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: db5a1e7832896d0be09ab49d08685ce03a6cd166fefcc2ed9a7fb23fe77fea4e; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:15:10.550Z.